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Resisting Big Tech empires (and their trade rules)

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Resisting Big Tech empires (and their trade rules)

by bilaterals.org, 30 April 2026

On 25 April 2026, Global Justice Now and the Balanced Economy Project convened the “Resisting Big Tech Empires” conference in London. In a packed venue, speakers, including author and activist Cory Doctorow [1], IT for Change co-founder Anita Gurumurthy [2] and researcher Sofia Scasserra [3], delivered a clear message : digital trade rules are entrenching Big Tech’s power grab over the digital economy. Those rules must be resisted.

For most people, the harms of the digital economy show up as intrusive ads, social media privacy breaches, or sprawling data centres appearing across the globe. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface lie textile workers monitored by AI cameras in India, algorithms discriminating against women Uber drivers, indebted farmers following flawed digital advice, and Amazon drivers forced to urinate in plastic bottles to meet impossible delivery targets.

Digital rules embedded at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and in many free trade agreements (FTAs) help make these realities possible.

The story of digital trade began in 1998, when the WTO adopted a “moratorium on electronic transmissions,” banning customs duties on digital products. At the time, Facebook and TikTok did not exist, and few inside the organisation grasped that they were laying the foundations of a future architecture of impunity. The moratorium has been routinely renewed ever since, largely without scrutiny.

Since then, a dense web of rules has spread through bilateral and regional trade agreements, as well as narrower digital deals, such as the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the EU–Singapore digital trade agreement. These agreements allow tech firms to extract data from signatory countries and transfer it abroad for processing. States lose control over that data — including highly sensitive information such as personal health records — because local storage and processing are often restricted. At the same time, rules on non-disclosure of algorithms and source code prevent governments from investigating risks, from security flaws to systemic bias. As in other sectors covered by FTAs, policies favouring local digital services are typically banned, further cementing Big Tech dominance.

Together, these rules have fostered a new form of monopoly capitalism, every bit as ruthless as that of the nineteenth-century robber barons — such as Rockefeller, Carnegie and Vanderbilt. Today’s tech monopolies operate on similar terms, amassing vast wealth through the exploitation of labour and the environment. Their reach continues to expand, driven by the rapid growth of AI models and the relentless proliferation of data centres. New clusters demand multiple gigawatts of power and consume billions of dollars’ worth of electricity each year. According to one International Energy Agency scenario, global data centre electricity use could reach around 1,000 terawatt hours by 2030 — roughly equivalent to the consumption of Japan. In an era defined by climate and energy crises, this trajectory reads like dystopian fiction.

This expansion is also vertical. Google, for instance, is no longer just a service provider : it has invested heavily in infrastructure, chip manufacturing and energy supply for AI data centres, tightening its grip over the entire digital value chain. Similar patterns are increasingly common across other sectors of the global economy.

Trade rules do more than entrench Big Tech’s ability to harvest data for AI training, targeted advertising and service provision. They also restrict people’s ability to repair or modify devices containing digital components — from smartphones and tractors to insulin pumps. These constraints stem from US anti-circumvention provisions in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, part of a broader tightening of intellectual property rules during the 1980s and 1990s in response to technological change. Under these provisions, reverse engineering — even to improve a product for legitimate use — can be treated as a criminal offence, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $500,000 fine for a first violation.

The United States subsequently exported these anti-circumvention rules through its trade agreements with countries, including Australia, Chile, Jordan and Morocco. During the negotiations for the US–Central America FTA (comprising Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic) threats to restrict coffee imports were reportedly used to force acceptance. Today, similar provisions appear in agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement (which replaced NAFTA), and European Union trade deals.

As Cory Doctorow put it, many digital products are rubbish by design.

What about China ? Several of the world’s largest tech companies — Tencent, Huawei, Alibaba and Baidu — are Chinese and exert global influence. Yet, as Sofia Scasserra argues, China’s strategy differs. It appears more focused on controlling infrastructure than on dominating data flows or intellectual property. The non-binding nature of data transfer rules in China’s trade agreements, alongside its open-source stance in certain aspects of the AI ecosystem, indicate a different approach.

Different strategies, then, but a shared ambition : to lead the technological race, with little regard for marginalised communities or environmental limits.

Yet the story is not over. In 2026, at the WTO ministerial conference in Cameroon, the moratorium on electronic transmissions was rejected for the first time, following a veto by Brazil — to the dismay of the US. This marked a significant shift, though its long-term implications remain uncertain. Will countries begin taxing digital products ? Could this open space for a more progressive agenda ? For now, the moratorium persists through numerous bilateral agreements, and the US is likely to continue exerting pressure, via tariffs and lopsided trade deals, to prevent regulation of its tech giants. Still, the symbolic impact is undeniable.

One lesson from the conference is obvious : a genuinely progressive digital agenda cannot stop at questions of sovereignty or data control. Would nurturing domestic tech champions to rival US or Chinese firms, while tightening control over national data, produce a more ethical system ? Unlikely.

Instead, dignity and collective rights must sit at the heart of digital trade policy. That means democratic governance of the entire digital ecosystem — data, infrastructure, artificial intelligence and algorithms alike. The key issue is not simply who controls data, but whether the datafication of society itself should be challenged. What purposes should data serve ? How should we handle sensitive data in health, education or labour ? Who benefits from vast digital infrastructures built without democratic oversight ? And what would genuinely progressive algorithms look like ?

Alternatives already exist. But without sustained pressure from below, the future of the digital economy will remain in the hands of tech barons. The strong turnout at this conference suggests that many recognise what is at stake and that resistance to these corporate rules is not only possible, but growing.